“I’ll be flying with heavy equipment. Quick maneuvers are going to be impossible. That’ll put me at a disadvantage against the Knight.”
“You picked this fight. Can’t give it back now. You’ve been authorized to use live gun ammo, by the way.”
“What?”
“Colonel Guneau’s full of confidence about this. He said we can try whatever we wanted. The Knight won’t be firing at you, so don’t worry about that.”
“I’d never be able to beat it if I got within cannon range. I can practically see him laughing at us right now.”
“Are we done here?” asked Lieutenant Burgadish.
“Yeah,” answered the major. “Memorize that schedule. Dismissed.”
Rei watched his partner quickly leave the room.
“Want some coffee?” Booker asked as he killed the display and moved over to the table. “I’m tired.”
“It’s like he’s wearing a mask…”
“Who, Burgadish? Hmm… He’s like the poster boy for Boomerang Squadron. What I find interesting is that you may be losing what it takes to be a Boomerang pilot, Rei. You gonna break up with Yukikaze and become my assistant?”
“I have no interest in breaking up with her,” he answered, and then quickly changed the subject. “Active homing missiles would be effective, even against ECM. And I can also use them as decoys to break my opponent’s weapons lock.”
The major set a cup under the coffee maker’s spout.
“Only your gun’s going to have live ammo. If you can’t live fire your missiles, why not pop off chaff and flares instead?”
“That may not be very effective against the Knight. Aside from radar it uses video cameras and pattern recognition software for targeting. Even if I goof its radar with chaff and jamming waves, it could still visually tag me with its targeting reticule and get me that way.”
Booker slurped at his coffee. “How about you carry smokescreen shells, too? Any particular color you’d like? I can even get you rainbow-colored ones.”
“This whole thing’s just making me depressed.”
“So… blue, then?”
“I wonder just what sort of dogfight the Flip Knight is going to give me.”
“Do it and find out,” answered the major.
YUKIKAZE TOOK OFF the next day at the appointed time. She was accompanied by a large AWACS plane that had been temporarily fitted out as a combat training control unit. During the training, the control plane’s combat data section would be on Yukikaze’s side; the Flip Knight would be challenging the Super Sylph without any support from it. The control plane would synthesize the tactical data of the Knight, its carrier plane, and Yukikaze, and then automatically render an instant verdict of which plane won or lost.
Yukikaze flew at high altitude at a fuel-conserving cruising speed toward Sugar Rock. Rei didn’t care anymore about the purpose or rationale behind this flight test. The troubles and expectations of the world below were left outside the cockpit. In the skies of Faery, all that mattered was the simple principle of kill or be killed. Anyone who allowed himself to be distracted by questions about why he was fighting or why the JAM were here would be killed by his opponent in short order and never make it back alive.
The winners were the ones who made it back.
Rei looked up at the deep blue sky above him. What more was there to think about than that?
Above the thin atmosphere hung the flattened ellipses of the binary suns. The Bloody Road that spilled out from them painted a crimson swath across the sky. A little higher up and he could see it, even in daylight: an enormous whirlpool, like a red Milky Way. Maybe if Faery didn’t have twin suns and there were no Bloody Road and the sky looked the same as it did on Earth, then maybe he would be able to look at things more rationally. This world was too illusory, so exceedingly unreal with its bizarre sights. It was like a dream, or an amusement park, or something out of a fairy tale. It seemed more so at night, as if the very air itself contained a hallucinatory power.
They were approaching the training area. Making a tactical guidance call, Yukikaze headed toward the target point using the comm line and tactical data link it established with the control plane. The control plane remained inside of C-zone and would continue to direct them from approximately a hundred kilometers to the rear.
Lieutenant Burgadish had already picked up their opponent’s radar emissions on the passive detectors. Yukikaze’s central computer automatically input the data into its file and compared the radar waves’ frequency and special characteristics to data on known types it had stored. The onboard computer classified the radar signature as UNKNOWN, but just then a call came from the control plane: “B-3, tactical control signals for the Flip Knight system detected.”
Their passive detectors could not pinpoint an exact target location, so the control plane fed them the necessary data. Lieutenant Burgadish confirmed the position of the Flip Knight’s carrier plane on Yukikaze’s radar display. It was about 250 kilometers out and closing. While Yukikaze’s radar was better than that of most fighter planes, it could not compare to the giant radome of the AWACS plane.
“The carrier’s taking its sweet time flying to our rear,” Burgadish said over the comm in his usual bored tone. “The Knights should be launching soon.”
“B-3,” called the control plane. “K-I, K-II, K-III, closing rapidly on your position.”
“What?” said Rei. “Lieutenant, confirm.”
The fire control radar Rei was operating had acquired the target and was tracking it, but it could only detect on a very narrow range.
“Can’t confirm… I see them now. Behind us, closing fast.”
A target symbol appeared on the multi-function display near Rei’s knee.
“Why didn’t the control plane give us an intercept course faster? Are they trying to kill us?”
“The point of this exercise is to simulate an actual assault. Okay, let’s do this.”
Rei sent them into a loose roll down toward the pure white sand, then pulled hard up and about. Out of the corner of his eye he caught the glitter of the Knights climbing up at them. He set the radar mode to super search, flicked the master arm switch to ARM, and pushed Yukikaze into a power dive toward the odd mountain rearing up out of the sugary sands before them. Trying to shake off the pursuing Knights, he used the velocity gained from the dive to whip around Sugar Rock, flying in its shadow with wings parallel to the mountain’s face.
He had anticipated that the Knights would break formation at this point. Most likely, one plane would stay high while the other two would split up to fly around either side of the mountain. He was hoping dearly that they would, because unless he split them up, he’d have no chance of beating them.
About three-quarters of the way around Sugar Rock, the fire control radar picked up Knight-II ahead, almost dead abreast of them, and locked on immediately. Range 1.6 klicks. Rei set the dogfight switch to ON, and the head-up display automatically switched to gun mode.
The Knight was small and hard to see, but the target designator reticule on the HUD framed the plane and showed him its position. However, Knight-II evaded him before he achieved optimal firing position. Not three seconds had passed since the radar lock.
Rei banked Yukikaze hard at full thrust and pursued Knight-II. He got back into targeting position, and as soon as they were within firing range he squeezed the trigger. The number readout on the HUD that showed the rounds remaining in his cannon rapidly began counting backwards. No hit.
“Evasive, right!” Burgadish called out.
Rei reflexively aborted his attack and went into a high-G turn. Knight-I was savagely charging up at them from below: Knight-II had been a decoy.